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AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

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Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#101

Post by celeritascelery »

hughzhang wrote: post #66
tanilama wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I would say this might be the strength of AI from another perspective: the ability to observe and monitor global information without losing attention. Or in other words, attend to the whole picture from get go without being overwhelmed. While it is an unfair advantage in competitive gaming, but in more realistic settings, there is no requirement that AI needs to have only 2 eyes. It can have as many as it c…

While that would be amazing if true, I'm pretty sure if you take away the stalker blink micro AlphaStar loses hands down to humans. This isn't taking away from Deepmind's victory at all, but I think micro was what made the AI come out ahead in this one. In many of the games, Mana had much better macro only to lose to blink stalkers.

Agreed. The micro was just too perfect to match. Can you imagine it with something like ravegers or reaper Grenades?

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#102

Post by hughzhang »

gamegoblin wrote: post #70
hughzhang wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealing with perfect blinking is basically impossible, since you can blink back your units right before they die. Stalkers are balanced around the fact that HUMANS have limits to how well they can micro.

I'm also excited to see the future of this bot when they demonstrate a terran AI with near-perfect marine/stim/medivac micro.

I'm scared. Medivacs only healing the front line and perfect stimming only the backline will be SOOO broken.

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#103

Post by tjoff »

knicholes wrote: post #85
Thaxll wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I think, I'd like to see how Alphastar react to "cannon rush" or other weird bo where you need to be "smart" to counter it and just not be based on insane / none human micro.

This is how it responds to cannon rush. : ) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYdWQjTWTFM

Isn't the point of a cannon rush to build the first cannons where they can't be seen?

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#104

Post by CydeWeys »

graedus wrote: post #89
CydeWeys wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a real advantage in the AI's favor though: It can focus its attention on a lot more things simultaneously. It's not just a UI difference; the AI is actually better at this, like how a pocket calculator is actually better at division than people. This latter bit we just accept; we don't defend humans by saying the calculator is cheating because it isn't writing out the calculation by hand. Similarly,…

It is certainly a real advantage, but I think the argument is that it's not as interesting as an AI that could win on the strength of better decision-making, or the innovation of novel strategies, etc.

AI wins on the strength of better decision-making and novel strategies in Chess and Go, though. I have no doubt we'll see this in RTSes in the near future as well. For now we may not be quite there yet, as this is simply the first time it's beaten a pro player in any way. Compare with the AlphaGo match vs Fan Hui. A year later and it was dominant over all pro players.

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#105

Post by karolist »

I'd love this to be released for Company of Heroes (Relic), the game has terrain that effects engagements and vehicle movement, multi directional cover, individual model health in squad units, territory control based resource income and tick down win condition and much more that makes it feel more tactical than SC overall.

It's got a bit of randomness where engagements are not just pure deterministic math inputs so I guess that's why it never gained pro league attention but it would be hell of an interesting challenge for AI because of it.

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#106

Post by hughzhang »

ForrestN wrote: post #73

Can anyone who has a full context compare this to OpenAI's work on Dota 2? Which is more impressive, both in how far along it is and the relative game difficulty?

Starcraft II pros are probably much further from perfect play than Dota2 pros (simply because the game is harder). As a result, having perfect micro is a much larger advantage in Starcraft than it is in Dota 2.

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#107

Post by doktrin »

AmericanBlarney wrote: post #27

It's certainly interesting but reminds me of DeepBlue playing Jeopardy against humans but having nd the questions fed to it electronically. Half the challenge of the game is buzzing in first. For humans, requires reading/listening and potentially making a judgement they you'll be able to answer the question and buzzing in before even hearing the whole thing. Same thing for StarCraft. If I could nap out my movers in a…

> reminds me of DeepBlue playing Jeopardy

Apologies for the nitpicky correction, but that was Watson.

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#108

Post by setr »

celeritascelery wrote: post #88
Jyaif wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI lost because it completely messed up the response to the immortal drop, nothing to do with micro.

Mana got himself in the same situation where he was surrounded by stalkers on multiple sides, but this time the micro wasn’t so crazy that he couldn’t manage it, and he was able to take on one group at a time. The immortal drop, while unanswered, was not really that effectual.

That time, the ai didn’t really even try to engage. In fact, the ending of the match was marked by the entirely absent group of stalkers as the natural was engaged.

It’s likely safer to say the AI was confused in general at that point, possibly related to the camera change, but we didn’t really get to see the quality of stalker micro that game

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#109

Post by celeritascelery »

CydeWeys wrote: post #97
hughzhang wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that would be amazing if true, I'm pretty sure if you take away the stalker blink micro AlphaStar loses hands down to humans. This isn't taking away from Deepmind's victory at all, but I think micro was what made the AI come out ahead in this one. In many of the games, Mana had much better macro only to lose to blink stalkers.

You play the game as it's written. Come back with another version of StarCraft that isn't so micro-intensive and we can see how the AI does on that. Chess and Go don't have any form of micro and AIs are nevertheless dominant there. I'd say, give AI development another year and I wouldn't expect there to be any kind of game, in any genre, that humans can beat AIs at. Whether it's Chess, Go, other classical board games…

> Chess and Go don't have any form of micro and AIs are nevertheless dominant there.

Yes, but chess and go have a tiny problem space compared to something like Starcraft. People want to see an AI win because it’s smart, not because it’s a computer capable of things impossible for humans. If the goal was perfect micro they could write computer programs to do that 10 years ago.

Re: AlphaStar: Mastering the Real-Time Strategy Game StarCraft II

#110

Post by setr »

celeritascelery wrote: post #93
andreyk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting that it starts by imitation learning from pros. I'd be curious to see if the macro can be learned without imitation; a much harder challenge. Also, playing with full visibility as was mostly the case in the demonstration is quite lame...

Also I wonder how it handles invisible units. Because as a human player you can see the shimmer if you look close. Can it see that or are they just totally invivisble to it?

Presumably completely invisible, as it was looking at raw unit stats rather than the visuals.
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